setting up robotics

This is a discussion on setting up robotics within the C++ Programming forums, part of the General Programming Boards category; I just got MS Robotics Developer Studio and am trying to explore some options for using it. I'm also a ...

setting up robotics

I just got MS Robotics Developer Studio and am trying to explore some options for using it. I'm also a complete novice here and have just been experimenting around the last few days with the "Visual Programming Language" in various simulations (my real robot for learning is in the mail, so just have the sims for the moment).

One of the languages you can use here is C++, and the code with which I'm working is a good deal over my head, but I'd like to try making it through the tutorials (if I can at this stage) and re-evaluate. I'm hoping at least to see how you set up these kinds of things and whether I'm at the point where I can use C++ here once I do get the thing set up.

But I'm already confused on the instructions in the Robotics C++ tutorial 1, where I'm supposed to modify the MyTutorial1.h header file. The first part of the file looks like this:

And MS says: "At the top of MyTutorial1.h, add a namespace directive and alias for the generic ContactSensor contract which is the basis for the bumper service. The following code snippet uses the alias, bumper.

I just haven't seen this namespace blah = BlahBlah::ABC ... syntax before. It looks like it's just creating an alias ("bumper" now stands for "Microsoft::Robotics::..."?). But then it also says to add a namespace DIRECTIVE, which I'm translating as to put in a statement with "using".

So, given all that and that I don't really know what I'm doing here (hence need to follow the instructions doggedly since I don't know what's important and what isn't), should I just put in exactly the statement given by Microsoft on the line above "using namespace System;" and leave it at that? Or do I need a using directive, too? Like maybe:

I think if I can once "get inside" and start using C++ in this context, I'll be able to figure out what's going on. But on this setup stuff, what will presumably happen if I get it wrong will be that it just doesn't work, and I have no idea how to troubleshoot--and have potentially made a mess out of the files that MS provided in the first place (I'm planning on marking my edits with comments for sure so that I can at least restore the files to their original states).